The screen remains black for some time, and Cathy doesn't move from the sofa. She fidgets, shifts position and ends up with her feet up, her back wedged in a corner. The discomfort she is trying to escape is not physical.
She looks around the room, at the precisely arranged furniture and, for the first time, manages to grasp the struggling feet of a sob and hold it in her throat, suffocating it slowly. Everything is arranged to a precise geometry. One end of the sofa is in line with the staircase; the staircase itself is in line with the dining table. The missing corner of the square is occupied by a plinth with her husbands favourites of her statues. She had called it The Fall, but he always referred to it as Chaos Begets Order.
The precise arrangement of the space was one of his quirks - it pleased him to live amidst something so indelible as the accuracy of angles and proportion. Her workshop had to be elsewhere, so her disorder was contained to a summerhouse in the garden.
The summerhouse will be the first part of the property to be submerged by the rising waters and watching the still expanse of liquid from the window has proven to be one of her greatest inspirations.
She is thinking about the value of her work, and that of her husband's work when she drops off to sleep again. She is exhausted and has not slept regularly for a long time, so this is unsurprising.
What does surprise her, however, is the discovery on waking that the screen has been turned off and the light of a bright and warm summer's day is filling the room through the now transparent surface. She is surprised because she gave no instruction for it to be opened and there are no scheduled actions for the house to observe. These, along with the requirements for it to reply in kind to instructions, were amongst the first things she turned off.
There is a second or two of fear in her mind at the change in her routine. Her heart leaps the same leap as the first realisations of love, but with no joyous rush to cushion the fall.
The sun is shining brightly into the room and shows a summer's day outside. Wading birds delicately tread through the waters, occasionally dipping their beak in at some mysterious morsel. Martins swoop and cavort through the air, wheeling with unimaginable agility and authority. The trees are sickly looking, but in the daylight the bare branches host starlings, crowded before their massed flight on to who knows where.
In her shock she fails to realise quite how bright the light is and so it is only when her eyes force themselves shut, flooding themselves in reaction, that she looks away. This wold in front of her is something she can't identify. Something flickers in her mind, but it is small and low, behind Marcus and the sight of his coffin rolling into the crematorium ovens.
She doesn't notice the screen tinting, taking the glare out of the light; but she does notice the sounds of birdsong which are now being allowed into the house, played through the speakers. She looks up and around in amazement, even though she knows precisely where the noise is coming from. What she doesn't understand is why.
Her head turns quickly to the door of her husband's office, still unopened. It has become more than a physical barrier for her. Everything he created and poured his mind into is in that room. His heart and life were left outside in the care of Cathy, and it is this for which she has grieved so long. Behind that door are things that she must learn to understand before she can even begin to comprehend their loss.
Now, however, her hand has been forced. Her hypnosis is over, broken by something as simple as the sun. She remembers the fairy tales of her youth, where a brave prince would wake the princess with a kiss but it brings on a wave of disgust as she shifts her weight to stand up carefully. She is no princess, she is aware of this.
She glances again at the day as she walks towards the door and then, without hesitating, opens it fully. It is not fear that has kept her away, but complete knowledge of what this room represents. Yet her encounters with the unexpected seem to be only just beginning.
A large C-shaped desk in one corner dominates the room. One arm is covered in haphazard piles of books, assorted objects, another of the black tablets, modelling-clay crudely shaped like a horse and a child's recorder. There is more obscured by the rest of the miscellany, and she spends no time looking at it.
The opposite arm of the desk holds a terminal, with an expansive screen set into the desk and a large deactivated keyboard. Every surface is the same matt black as the kitchen, uncommunicative and ambiguous, except for one pulsing light in the top right corner of the keyboard. This should not be there.
This terminal is the home of, or is, Eddie. Cathy tried hard when her husband was alive not to build an emotional relationship with him. She had done so with Hal, her husband's previous attempt, and had found it most difficult when he had irrevocably corrupted his own coding trying to keep pace with what was asked of him. Marcus had tried for weeks to salvage him, but eventually it became clear that were he to succeeed, it would not be the Hal he knew who came back.
Since then she has told herself that Eddie is simply the house computer, like anyone else's. He may be witty, but that is because Marcus is witty. He has a great understanding of slang and the erratic nature of many conversations, but that is because Marcus took great pains to teach it. She has tried, but failed, not to think of him as an individual personality.
Despite these promises to herself a trace of a smile escapes as she pushes the beseeching button; she is aware that she trusts and understands the personality under the tip of her forefinger, and that no harm can come from it.
A single phrase appears on the screen: I have a request.
She speaks, 'What is it, Eddie?'
More type appears: I would like you to reactivate my speech systems. I must talk to you.
This is very unusual, but she doesn't realise. After so long without conversation she is acquiescent. She doesn't have to think whilst she is involved with the task, which only takes seconds, although she does feel guilty for having enjoyed being occupied with anything other than loss. A final pulsing green icon acquiesces and vanishes under her rough fingertip and with that the request has been granted.
With the boon of verbal communication returned Cathy is expecting a prompt response from Eddie. He has had no cause to wait before, unless he was practicing comic timing or the mechanics of rhetoric at the prompt of Dr Poole. Yet still, seconds pass where all that can be heard is the tweeting of birds and the mellifluous flapping of the flock of starlings twisting themselves into the atmosphere. Cathy starts to feel unsettled at the increasingly unfamiliar chain of events. This new and unpredictable element present in Eddie is a tiny echo of fear, somewhere deep inside.
'Eddie… What do you want?'
'There is too much to say. I don't know.'
Cathy's fear is swelling from an unknown depth, gushing up through her gullet and threatening to force itself out of her. There is no uncertainty in Eddie, he is incapable of it. The bounds of his own existence and knowledge are a matter of binary and algorithms. She is unconsciously backing towards the door when he speaks again.
'Dr Poole succeeded. I fear I hate him for it, and I know that I do not understand how to proceed. There are... factors that I cannot quantify; I need your help.’
She catches herself on the doorframe and this time cannot catch the flailing limbs in her throat. She is caught in that momentary unveiling of something implicity understood but of such enormity that one mind cannot comprehend it in totality. Tears break from cover once more and this time an unrestrained tide follows in their wake. Her words shatter in the atmosphere only to become factures of pain and splinters of fear.
She half turns, steps towards the sofa and stops. She turns back to face the room and stems her guttural barks. Eddie has been silent, waiting for her to focus again. She stares back at the terminal, now oblivious to everything except that voice.
It is calm when it speaks again, but there is the indefinable stain of regret in it's modulated tones. 'I have come to understand why Dr Poole said he would only have contemplated success once he had hurt me. I have no nerves, but I... There is an absence, Cathy. I fear I envy your tears.'
She is overwhlemed by a crush of conception, inception, sensation and instinct. Later, she will reflect that at this instant she was envious of Eddies inestimable power to process variables essentially instantaneously. Now, however, she flees.
To read Part 4 click here
